If you love cooking healthy using fresh ingredients, you’re in good company. The trend today is away from the large, corporate agri-businesses and in support of your local farmer. This is great news as you can have more healthy cooking using locally grown, fresh produce. And, nothing helps your cooking to taste fresher than cooking with herbs especially those grown locally. Sometimes, you may gets a great deal on your herbs and decide that you need to dry them. This week, you’re going to learn about what to do with your local herb bounty as well as the secret to drying herbs.

Chef Todd Mohr gets his produce sent to him weekly from The Produce Box. This week’s produce box from his local farmer included turnips, broccoli, squash and endive lettuce. The most surprising content was a tumble-weed size of fresh dill.

Healthy cooking always includes cooking with herbs. Fresh herbs are the artist’s final touch on your dinner creation. Cooking with herbs means being able to use their fragrance to highlight your dish whether they’re fresh or dry herbs.

However, if you find yourself with a month’s worth of fresh herbs in your produce box, and suspect that the herb will not last the week in the refrigerator, it’s time to plan ahead so as not to waste all that expensive herb.

Drying herbs is a very simple process, and there are three ways to dry herbs that are excess from your garden, given by a neighbor or obtained from your local farmer.

1. You can dry them naturally by hanging them in the garage or a warm dark place

2. You can dry them in the oven at a very low temperature for an extended period of time

3. You can wash and dry them completely and trim the fresh dill with scissors into a ziplock bag for freezing

To add even more flavor and aroma to your healthy cooking, consider using fresh herbs. If you are cooking with herbs and have too much fresh herb, you can easily become an expert at drying herbs for later use.